


I Have No Mouth (And I Must Scream)

by Lypreila



Series: Anya Trevelyan [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Anya Trevelyan, Cole (Dragon Age) - Freeform, Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Except I don't, Hurt/Comfort, I feel horrible for doing this to my oc, Other, PTSD, Self Harm, Trigger Warnings, baggage, i am literal trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 00:56:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7077895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lypreila/pseuds/Lypreila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anya Trevelyan thought she'd come to terms with her stupid, enforced decision to beg for Templar aid in closing the breach.  So why does she find herself frozen as they arrive, trying in vain to hold herself together, struggling to overcome her fear?  Why does it feel like she is going to fall apart?  </p><p>A bit of a study on how my Mage Trevelyan, Anya, deals with the panic and anxiety that besets her every so often, and how Cole helps, and makes it better.   And also a study at how I will continue to suck at Summaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have No Mouth (And I Must Scream)

**Author's Note:**

> I.... really must hate my Trevelyan. I mean, the shit I put this charachter through.... and that Harlan Ellison line just seemed too perfect. This is a short one, even for me. 
> 
> Anyway, for Dragon Age Alternative Pairing Week 2016, and because I am literal trash for anything Cole. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for anxiety attacks, mild self harm, and implied abuse.

It is Cole who seeks her out, as she stands, distant in body and mind, to watch the Templars arrive two days after her return to Haven. The air is cool, even this low in the Frostbacks, and a light breeze brushes the long strands of her auburn hair, tossing them about her face. The air is sweet, and the sky is blue, but the day seems bleak to her as she stands, arms wrapped about her, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arms so hard that they’ve turned bloodless, white. She’s sure there will be bruises there, tomorrow. A shudder moves through her. It hurts. She silently berates herself. She thought she’d come to terms with this. But it had hit her again just now - gleaming armor and the sound of marching boots pulling her back to the past. Focus. She must stay here. 

“Bright, so bright it burns, like the bindings on my bloody wrists. Why are you afraid?” 

Anya Trevelyan is silent, brown eyes focused on the Templars that march past, shining, twinkling in the mountain sun, a smaller group but still so much like the Templars she knew and loathed from the Ostwick Circle. Some of them may be from Ostwick, she supposes, and another shudder grips at her. The pain in her core grows, spreading low and deep, and only years of practice in silencing herself keeps her from screaming. But she wants to scream. She wants to so badly, because what has she done? Agreed to speak to the Order, only because a certain former-Templar-turned-Inquisition-commander had looked at her with pain and something like hate in his brown eyes, and she wanted so, so badly to help. She should’ve known better. Each time she tries to help, her intentions turn to ash and slip through her fingers, to be trod beneath countless uncaring feet. Each time, a little of her turns to ash as well. Each time, a piece of her falls to the ground, forgotten. ‘You think I’d be used to Templars by now,’ she thinks, but no. A lifetime of habit and perception is not easily unlearned. 

“He is not like them. He is wounded, and he wants, and he weeps for her, but he is not bad.” 

“I know that now.” Her voice keens, almost a groan, and at last she tears her eyes from the yard below, and settles them upon him, standing slightly behind her. His hat and hair shade his eyes from her, but she gazes at him anyway, even as a few of her nails break the skin of her arms, small crescents of blood welling up around the tips of her fingers. 

“He wouldn’t have been angry. He hurts, and when you felt that hurt you responded like you have a hundred times before. Don’t make them angry. Don’t give them a reason. Don’t fail. Acquiesce, accommodate, accept. Hide your hatred child, we have work to do.” 

The words lance through her, stinging, burning worse than any blade ever could. An involuntary gasp escapes her. Lorelei’s words, branded onto her brain for all eternity. The memory surges, pushes, she can taste the bitter herbs on her tongue once more, and she is almost sick right there, but somehow, by some miracle she stays on her feet. Cool hands slide over her own, dwarfing them, tugging them away before she can do more damage to her arms. The sudden lack of pain there is almost more than she can bear. 

“Please, Cole, don’t…” The words are hoarse, almost inaudible. “I just need another moment, and then I’ll go down, I’ll greet the -”

“The pain helps you focus, and feel, and it’s one thing you can control. You know that it’s futile, but you don’t care. You should care.” 

Her hands are dropped, and his arms slide around her from behind. The sharp pain of memory and loss is momentarily forgotten in her surprise. In their extremely short acquaintance she’s never known Cole to go out of his way to seek physical contact. 

“It feels like you’re going to fly apart, like everything inside will make you explode, and it’s hard to keep yourself together, but you must, because how are you going to help make things better if you don‘t?” She can feel his breath on her neck, and it doesn’t frighten her the way it would had it been anyone else, and she takes a moment to be absurdly grateful for that. “You’re not going to fly apart.” 

They stand there like that, and eventually her breathing slows, evens out. Cole’s arms substitute for her own, and soon she no longer feels like her entire body is going to explode, leaving nothing but dust to be blown away by some errant breeze, a bare foot note to the march of the ages. The tension drains from her, so slowly, but eventually it is mostly gone. The Templars are setting up down below, and the sight of them still pulls at her, perturbs her, but she is ready, she thinks, to meet them. She’d gone against her better judgment in recruiting them, permitted her fear of angering the Commander, or more accurately the Templar he used to be, to guide her. None of that, however, matters now. Now that they are here, they are her responsibility, and she will probably spend the rest of her time with the Inquisition terrified out of her wits by her ‘guests’. Anya pushes a sigh through her tightly pursed lips, steeling herself to meet the beasts that haunt her nightmares. Coles arms slip from around her, and she turns to thank him. He stands behind her, all gawky angles and shadowed features. His face, she can tell, is set with sadness. 

“Don’t worry. No one here will let them hurt you again.”

And then he is gone.


End file.
